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Thursday, 13 September 2012

Book review #1

Insignia

By:
S.J. Kincaid

Insignia book review

Tom
Raines has no friends, and has fallen so far behind in his education that he
has to attend an online school. He and his dad have to scrounge a living while
travelling from casino to casino. Then he is offered a spot at the Pentagonal
Spire, where Combatants train to fight battles with space ships over land in
space. There are 12 major power holding Companies, divided in the middle
between the Russo-Chinese alliance, and the Indo-American alliance. Tom must
choose which company(s) to befriend, but he might not have one. Will Tom break
down? Or can he succeed?

Insignia really captures the readers’ attention
and puts you in Tom’s futuristic world, filled with excitement and action, and
interesting points of view on technology and what can be achieved with it.I found some similarities to the real
world in this book, one of them being that we depend on companies for our food,
and the companies have abused this. Harbringer, one of the companies in the
books, has put some chemical in all the water, and though there are no negative
effects they charge the whole civilian population to drink or use water in any
form. The Indian region refused to pay the tax and they were killed using bombs
that didn’t damage the land. The area was repopulated with people who would pay
taxes. This shows that companies are the major powers in this world and control
most of the population. We can really compare this to today’s companies and it
makes you wonder whether they will abuse our dependency on them. Now, if we go
back to our book, I think that Tom is an excellently constructed character,
very similar to a teenage boy around our age. And, towards the end it feels
like the book has about million things to wonder about until they are wrapped
up, and it leaves you wondering “What next?”

Quote:

“Karl took a menacing step toward him, farting
with each movement. The stench mounted in the air.

Dalton seized him. 'Karl, for God's sake, go
to the restroom.'

'It's notmy
fault. It's Raines! I'm telling you, he ---'

'GO!'

"Karl dashed through the crowd of
silent partygoers. Everyone in sight had hands clamped over their noses at the
ghastly smell pervading the air.